ABOUT THE TALK
This work aims to recuperate the political partnership that developed between Mohandas K. Gandhi and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani in 1919-1920. These two remarkable individuals – Gandhi, then emerging as the leader of the Indian National Congress, and Sarala Devi, the charismatic inspiration of the militant nationalist movement in Bengal met in the wake of the Amritsar Massacre and worked together for a year. There is evidence, in letters that were assumed to be lost, that Gandhi imagined theirs would be the ideal political partnership to inspire Indians, but various forces, political and personal, prevented that from happening. Before these letters were published, numerous authors imagined Sarala Devi as a seductress who almost derailed the nationalist movement. This work belongs to feminist history in its serious concern for restoring to remarkable feminist and nationalist leader, re-opening discussion of Gandhi’s relationships with women, and stressing the importance of feminist methodologies in researching topics.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Geraldine Forbes is Professor Emerita, State University of New York Oswego. A pioneer in researching and writing women’s history in Colonial India, she has edited the memoirs of three Indian women: Shudha Mazumdar, Manmohini Zutshi Sahgal, and Haimabati Sen. Her other publications include Women in Modern India; Indian Women and the Freedom Movement; Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine and Historiography; Lost Letters and Feminist History: the Political Friendship of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani; Positivism in Bengal; and several articles and book chapters. In 2024, she was a consultant for the Forgotten Crimes Podcast “Murder in Bengal”, which told the story of the murder of Elokeshi in Tarakeswar in 1873. Now retired, she is researching the life and work of an American Baptist missionary in the Naga hills in the late 19th and early 20th Century.